Day: December 22, 2025
Crockett fires back at JD Vance’s ‘street girl’ comments, says it’s a racist trope
Rep. Jasmine Crockett fired back at Vice President JD Vance after he mocked her “street-girl persona,” calling herself authentic and arguing, “they should be scared.”
Kevin O’Leary warns China ‘kicking our heinies’ in AI race as regulatory roadblocks stall US
Kevin O’Leary warns China is outpacing America in AI technology due to regulatory roadblocks that delay U.S. power infrastructure development by years.
’60 Minutes’ reporter lashes out at Bari Weiss after segment on El Salvador prison yanked at last minute
CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi accused Bari Weiss of political motivations for yanking her “60 Minutes” story, which interviewed migrants sent to the notorious CECOT prison.
Lions fan speaks out after altercation with Steelers star
A Detroit Lions fan who mixed it up with Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf opened up about what led to the heated altercation.
Is the laundromat the last bastion of public life?
The world is vast and varied — different foods, cars, buildings, beliefs, and political systems wherever you go.
Yet somehow, laundromats are always exactly the same.
In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality.
Universal, they stretch from the northern Atlantic to the southern Pacific. Where there are people and where there is civilization, there is laundry and there are laundromats.
Watching the washers
I remember waiting in a laundromat in northern France. It was right across the street from the Super-U. It was long and thin with tall windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. It was late November, the low sun was warm on the seats next to the windows, our clothes turning back and forth behind the tightly sealed window facing us. The silence of the warm carpet, our winter coats unbuttoned though still on, as we waited for our clothes to finish before walking back to the apartment.
In Chicago, my laundromat had long rows of metal machines. They loaded from the top and took six quarters per cycle. You slipped the quarters in the little slots and only once all six were filled could you push the metal slider forward. A few seconds later, the machine would start.
There were boxes of overpriced dry laundry soap next to the front door and a few benches next to the bathrooms that were always occupied by people staring down at their phones. I would wait in the corner, leaning against a rumbling dryer, looking up from my phone only when someone got up to move their wet clothes from washer to dryer. I would see wrinkly shirts, knotted sweaters, socks, pants, and skirts as they shuffled their clothes to another metal machine.
When I lived in Jerusalem, I washed my clothes at a laundromat close to Kikar Tzion. It was usually quiet, though never entirely empty. There was always someone else there talking quietly on the phone, listening more than speaking. Sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in French. The walls were covered with posters and printouts with little tags with phone numbers that could be torn off and slipped into your pocket if you were interested in whatever they were selling.
Metal machine music
Last week, our washer broke. On Saturday night, I took three loads plus two kids out in a snowstorm to the laundromat to get the laundry done.
It was empty, with the exception of the guy at the front desk who greeted us kindly as we stumbled in knocking the snow off our boots on the long black carpet. There was a TV in the corner, a couple tables with chairs, long lines of big, silver machines, and a few teal seats that looked like they were made in 1982. The kids and I loaded up the machines, poured in the detergent we had brought from home, and began listening to the low hum as the clothes began to spin.
The sound is always the same in every laundromat. There’s never loud music on a stereo; if there’s a TV, it’s always muted or very quiet. Even the people waiting for their socks and underwear behave as if they’re in a library, talking in low voices by the rumbling machines and spinning heat.
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Jim Steinfeldt/Getty Images
On the scent
The smell too; it’s always the same. All laundry soap all over the world has that same detergent-y scent. Soft, flowery, and lightly chemical. Detergent in Italy and detergent in Israel may have different names from detergent in America or detergent in Iceland, but they all are basically the same. The world is big and there are so many people, but all their clothes smell the same.
At the laundromat, people wash their most intimate garments in public, together. They carry their laundry baskets in and wash the things they only show their significant others right next to the things that someone else only shows theirs.
We never acknowledge any of this, and this is why we all hurry to put our clothes in, or change our clothes over, when we are at the laundromat. We all have a secret to protect, and we are all stuck together, in public, with the spinning machines, the low hum of the heat, and the smell of chemical flowers.
Together alone
This is part of why we are all fairly quiet as well. It’s like we don’t actually want to acknowledge that anyone else is really there washing their clothes right alongside ours. We may make small talk, but we don’t say much.
Laundromats are almost something like holdovers from a more necessarily communal time. Waiting and watching the people sitting and their clothes spinning, I have thought about how all the women must have washed clothes down by the river, or wherever it was they did laundry, in the ancient days.
In an era of technologically dehumanizing isolation, I find myself seeing beauty in the most mundane moments of human connection or human commonality. The things we share even if we don’t dwell on them. The things we do together even if we are alone. The spinning machines, the private garments we want to keep to ourselves, the smell of the detergent, the quiet as we wait.
Charlie Kirk was right: How Islam is destroying the West
Western nations are collapsing under the weight of mass migration, failed assimilation, demographic upheaval, and the growing alliance between Marxist and Islamist ideologies — a threat Charlie Kirk warned about with clarity long before his death.
“We don’t talk enough about Islam. … We don’t talk nearly enough about the hundreds of thousands of Muslims that we have voluntarily imported into our country that build mosques, implement Sharia law,” Kirk once said.
“You go to Minneapolis, you even go to Dallas, you go to New York, and it will metastasize. It will spread. You know why? Because the women of the West, they get cats. The women of Muslims, they have eight kids. Eventually, it doesn’t work very well,” he continued.
BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey couldn’t agree with Kirk more.
“I thought he was going to go in the direction of toxic empathy, because it’s toxic empathy that has made us say, ‘No, Christians are the bad ones. Muslims are the great ones. And we just need to accept, unfettered, anyone into our country,’” she tells her father and BlazeTV contributor Ron Simmons on “Relatable.”
And Simmons has noticed it in his own neighborhood.
“Even in the neighborhood that I live in, I walk a lot. … I will pass people that I know have immigrated here, you know, meet them, and they won’t even make eye contact. It’s just really strange,” Simmons tells his daughter.
“That’s not the America that I grew up in or believe in,” he adds.
“And that’s one thing, you know, we heard so much, especially the past few years: ‘Diversity is our strength. Diversity is our strength.’ Well, statistically, that’s not true,” Stuckey agrees.
“It can bring different perspectives and things like that, but at the end of the day, you have to say, ‘Okay, but this is what we have in common.’ But if you don’t have that, then diversity is a weakness,” she says.
“We are trying to force multiculturalism upon people without any shared underneath values,” she continues. “And that has worked zero places throughout history.”
Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?
To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Herlene Budol on being rejected by Bea Borres as baby’s ninang: ‘Hindi naman ako nasaktan”
Herlene Budol said that she was not hurt when she was rejected by her close friend Bea Borres to be one of the godmothers or ninang of the latter’s baby.
LA Tenorio, Yukien Andrada relish Magnolia debuts as playing coach, rookie
Two former Bedans made their debuts on Sunday in the PBA Philippine Cup–but at very different points in their basketball lives.
Amici Philippines founder Fr. Gianluigi Colombo passes away
Father Gianluigi Colombo, the Salesian Italian priest who founded the Italian restaurant Amici di Don Bosco has passed away.
Christmas trees around the world
Check out the festive Christmas tree in scenes from around the world, from a beach in California to a recycling workshop in Ghana to a field in Malta.
